New Atheism is a social and political movement in favour of atheism and secularism promoted by a collection of modern atheist writers who have advocated the view that "religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises."[1] There is uncertainty about how much influence the movement has had on religious demographics worldwide. In England and Wales, as of 2011[update] the increase in atheist groups, student societies, publications and public appearances coincided with the non-religious being the largest growing demographic, followed by Islam and Evangelicalism.[2] This trend in the growth of non-religion preceded the New Atheist movement.[citation needed]

In a 2010 column entitled Why I Don't Believe in the New Atheism, Tom Flynn contends that what has been called "New Atheism" is neither a movement nor new, and that what was new was the publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, read by millions, and appearing on best-seller lists.[4]

After the death of Hitchens, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who was intended to attend the original occasion where the term was coined) was described as the "fourth horse-woman" of the Non-Apocalypse.[20] Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, fleeing in 1992 to the Netherlands in order to escape an arranged marriage.[21] She became involved in Dutch politics, rejected faith, and became vocal in opposing Islamic ideology, especially concerning women, as exemplified by her books Infidel and The Caged Virgin.[22] Hirsi Ali was later involved in the production of the film Submission, for which her friend Theo Van Gogh was murdered with a death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest.[23] This resulted in Hirsi Ali's hiding and later immigration to the United States, where she now resides and remains a prolific critic of Islam,[24] religion, and the treatment of women in Islamic doctrine and society,[25] and a proponent of free speech and the freedom to offend.[26][27]

The New Atheists write mainly from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent, or even incapable of dealing with the "God" concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis,[36] having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. Other New Atheists such as Victor Stenger propose that the personal Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests,[37] and argue that naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the origin of life, species, and the inner workings of the brain and consciousness. Nowhere, they argue, is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality. New Atheists have been associated with the argument from divine hiddenness and the idea that "absence of evidence is evidence of absence" when evidence can be expected.

The New Atheists are particularly critical of the two non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould regarding the existence of a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution".[45] In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to distinct non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the empirical realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. The New Atheism leaders contend that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion. In an article published in Free Inquiry magazine,[38] and later in his 2006 book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins writes that the Abrahamic religions constantly deal in scientific matters. Matt Ridley notes that religion does more than talk about ultimate meanings and morals, and science is not proscribed from doing the same. After all, morals involve human behavior, an observable phenomenon, and science is the study of observable phenomena. Ridley notes that there is substantial scientific research on evolutionary origins of ethics and morality.[46]

Popularized by Sam Harris is the view that science and thereby currently unknown objective facts may instruct human morality in a globally comparable way. Harris’ book The Moral Landscape[47] and accompanying TED Talk How Science can Determine Moral Values[48] proposes that human well-being and conversely suffering may be thought of as a landscape with peaks and valleys representing numerous ways to achieve extremes in human experience, and that there are objective states of well-being.

New atheism is politically engaged in a variety of ways. These include campaigns to reduce the influence of religion in the public sphere, attempts to promote cultural change (centering, in the United States, on the mainstream acceptance of atheism), and efforts to promote the idea of an ‘atheist identity’. Internal strategic divisions over these issues have also been notable, as are questions about the diversity of the movement in terms of its gender and racial balance.[49]

CardinalWilliam Levada believes that New Atheism has misrepresented the doctrines of the church.[50] Cardinal Walter Kasper described New Atheism as "aggressive", and he believed it to be the primary source of discrimination against Christians.[51] In a Salon interview, intellectual provocateur Chris Hedges argued that New Atheism propaganda is just as extreme as that of Christian right propaganda.[52]

The theologians Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with what they regard as "the evangelical nature of the new atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible." They believe they have found similarities between new atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both "encourages endless conflict without progress" between both extremities.[53] Sociologist William Stahl said "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religious fundamentalists."[54]

Some commentators have accused the New Atheist movement of Islamophobia.[55][56][57][58] Wade Jacoby and Hakan Yavuz assert that "a group of 'new atheists' such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens" have "invoked Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory to explain the current political contestation" and that this forms part of a trend toward "Islamophobia [...] in the study of Muslim societies".[57] William W. Emilson argues that "the 'new' in the new atheists' writings is not their aggressiveness, nor their extraordinary popularity, nor even their scientific approach to religion, rather it is their attack not only on militant Islamism but also on Islam itself under the cloak of its general critique of religion".[58]

Nathan Lean, author of The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims, has also criticized New Atheists for Islamophobia, and in regard to such criticism called attention to a criticism made by Chomsky, raising the spectre of a "state religion":

Noam Chomsky... has said that Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens are “religious fanatics” and that in their quest to bludgeon society with their beliefs about secularism, they have actually adopted the state religion — one that, though void of prayers and rituals, demands that its followers blindly support the whims of politicians.[59]

Toronto-based journalist and commentator on Mideast politics, Murtaza Hussain, has alleged that leading figures in the New Atheist movement “have stepped in to give a veneer of scientific respectability to today's politically-useful bigotry".[60][61]

^Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey (2010). "Beating 'God' to Death: Radical Theology and the New Atheism". In Amarnath Amarasingam. Religion and the New Atheism A Critical Appraisal. Haymarket Books. p. 35. ISBN9781608462032.

^William Stahl (2010). "One-Dimensional Rage: The Social Epistemology of the New Atheism and Fundamentalism". In Amarnath Amarasingam. Religion and the New Atheism A Critical Appraisal. Haymarket Books. pp. 97–108. ISBN9781608462032.